Treatment-seeking rates in malaria endemic countries

BACKGROUND: The proportion of individuals who seek treatment for fever is an important quantity in understanding access to and use of health systems, as well as for interpreting data on disease incidence from routine surveillance systems. For many malaria endemic countries (MECs), treatment-seeking information is available from national household surveys. The aim of this paper was to assemble sub-national estimates of treatment-seeking behaviours and to predict national treatment-seeking measures for all MECs lacking household survey data. METHODS: Data on treatment seeking for fever were obtained from Demographic and Health Surveys, Malaria Indicator Surveys and Multiple Cluster Indicator Surveys for every MEC and year that data were available. National-level social, economic and health-related variables were gathered from the World Bank as putative covariates of treatment-seeking rates. A generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) was used to estimate treatment-seeking behaviours for countries where survey data were unavailable. Two separate models were developed to predict the proportion of fever cases that would seek treatment at (1) a public health facility or (2) from any kind of treatment provider. RESULTS: Treatment-seeking data were available for 74 MECs and modelled for the remaining 24. GAMMs found that the percentage of pregnant women receiving prenatal care, vaccination rates, education level, government health expenditure, and GDP growth were important predictors for both categories of treatment-seeking outcomes. Treatment-seeking rates, which varied both within and among regions, revealed that public facilities were not always the primary facility type used. CONCLUSIONS: Estimates of treatment-seeking rates show how health services are utilized and help correct reported malaria case numbers to obtain more accurate measures of disease burden. The assembled and modelled data demonstrated that while treatment-seeking rates have overall increased over time, access remains low in some malaria endemic regions and utilization of government services is in some areas limited

The role of religiousness on substance-use disorder treatment outcomes: a comparison of black and white adolescents

This study compares 41 Black and 124 White adolescents at intake and discharge from a residential treatment program for substance-use disorders. Study data were obtained as part of a larger study (N = 195) that sought to assess the relationship of helping behavior and addiction recovery. This post-hoc analysis aims to identify cultural strengths that may be associated with recovery from substance-use disorders among Black adolescents. Using regression analyses and controlling for the severity of substance use and background variables that distinguish racial groups, religious practices and behaviors at intake were examined. Specifically, Black youth and White youth were compared on treatment outcomes, including alcohol or drug use during treatment, drug craving, 12-Step work, and 12-Step helping. The burden of health and socioeconomic disparities at intake did not disproportionately disfavor Black adolescents. Outcomes related to 12-Step measures were similar between Black and White youth. White adolescents reported higher craving scores at discharge, and Black adolescents were more likely to use drugs during treatment. High levels of religiousness at treatment intake were linked to greater 12-Step work and greater 12-Step helping at discharge. High levels of religiousness at intake were not related to drug use during treatment or to craving scores at discharge. The relationship between intake levels of religiousness and treatment-related outcomes did not differ by race.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3437261/Accepted manuscrip

Motif Discovery through Predictive Modeling of Gene Regulation

We present MEDUSA, an integrative method for learning motif models of transcription factor binding sites by incorporating promoter sequence and gene expression data. We use a modern large-margin machine learning approach, based on boosting, to enable feature selection from the high-dimensional search space of candidate binding sequences while avoiding overfitting. At each iteration of the algorithm, MEDUSA builds a motif model whose presence in the promoter region of a gene, coupled with activity of a regulator in an experiment, is predictive of differential expression. In this way, we learn motifs that are functional and predictive of regulatory response rather than motifs that are simply overrepresented in promoter sequences. Moreover, MEDUSA produces a model of the transcriptional control logic that can predict the expression of any gene in the organism, given the sequence of the promoter region of the target gene and the expression state of a set of known or putative transcription factors and signaling molecules. Each motif model is either a $k$-length sequence, a dimer, or a PSSM that is built by agglomerative probabilistic clustering of sequences with similar boosting loss. By applying MEDUSA to a set of environmental stress response expression data in yeast, we learn motifs whose ability to predict differential expression of target genes outperforms motifs from the TRANSFAC dataset and from a previously published candidate set of PSSMs. We also show that MEDUSA retrieves many experimentally confirmed binding sites associated with environmental stress response from the literature.Comment: RECOMB 200

Standardized Patients in Occupational Therapy Education

The use of standardized patients (SPs) in occupational therapy (OT) education has greatly increased in recent years; however, there is limited research on the perceptions of student’s clinical readiness utilizing SPs and whether or not the utilization of SPs prepare students for fieldwork. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of SPs in OT education and the perceived clinical readiness of students. The use of SPs has been thoroughly researched in other healthcare related fields. It is important that the same critical attention be given to their use in our own field, which emphasizes the importance of clinical readiness in the development of future professionals. A survey was given to the OT students of Dominican University of California who have had experience with the curriculum, which utilizes SPs. Students were asked to rate their own perceptions of readiness in a number of skills, which were practiced using SPs. Students were also asked to answer qualitative questions regarding their experiences in the simulated environment with SPs. Results indicated that four common themes emerged to the perceptions on the effectiveness of SPs. The use of SPs helped implement observational skills, bring classroom information to practical experience, identified the impact of secondary health conditions/comorbidity, and had effect on student performance due to anxiety. Further studies should be conducted to support this growing area of OT education

Multi-Resolution Analysis and Fractional Quantum Hall Effect: an Equivalence Result

In this paper we prove that any multi-resolution analysis of \Lc^2(\R) produces, for some values of the filling factor, a single-electron wave function of the lowest Landau level (LLL) which, together with its (magnetic) translated, gives rise to an orthonormal set in the LLL. We also give the inverse construction. Moreover, we extend this procedure to the higher Landau levels and we discuss the analogies and the differences between this procedure and the one previously proposed by J.-P. Antoine and the author.Comment: Submitted to Journal Mathematical Physisc

Biochemical and Genetic Characterization of PspE and GlpE, Two Single-domain Sulfurtransferases of Escherichia coli

The pspE and glpE genes of Escherichia coli encode periplasmic and cytoplasmic single-domain rhodaneses, respectively, that catalyzes sulfur transfer from thiosulfate to thiophilic acceptors. Strains deficient in either or both genes were constructed. Comparison of rhodanese activity in these strains revealed that PspE provides 85% of total rhodanese activity, with GlpE contributing most of the remainder. PspE activity was four times higher during growth on glycerol versus glucose, and was not induced by conditions that induce expression of the psp regulon. The glpE/pspE mutants displayed no apparent growth phenotypes, indicating that neither gene is required for biosynthesis of essential sulfur-containing molecules. PspE was purified by using cation exchange chromatography. Two distinct active peaks were eluted and differed in the degree of stable covalent modification, as assessed by mass spectrometry. The peak eluting earliest contained the equivalent mass of two additional sulfur atoms, whereas the second peak contained mainly one additional sulfur. Kinetic properties of purified PspE were consistent with catalysis occurring via a double-displacement mechanism via an enzyme-sulfur intermediate involving the active site cysteine. Kms for SSO32- and CN- were 2.7 mM and 32 mM, respectively, and kcat was 64s-1. The enzyme also catalyzed transfer of sulfur from thiosulfate to dithiothreitol, ultimately releasing sulfide

Chronicles of Oklahoma

Article explains the viewpoints of American Indians on languages. Included are charts documenting the amount of Native speakers of each of the known American Indian languages

Abstract polymer models with general pair interactions

A convergence criterion of cluster expansion is presented in the case of an abstract polymer system with general pair interactions (i.e. not necessarily hard core or repulsive). As a concrete example, the low temperature disordered phase of the BEG model with infinite range interactions, decaying polynomially as $1/r^{d+\lambda}$ with $\lambda>0$, is studied.Comment: 19 pages. Corrected statement for the stability condition (2.3) and modified section 3.1 of the proof of theorem 1 consistently with (2.3). Added a reference and modified a sentence at the end of sec. 2.

Chiral Perturbation Theory for τ→ρπντ\tau \to \rho \pi\nu_\tau, τ→K∗πντ\tau \to K^* \pi \nu_\tau, and τ→ωπντ\tau \to \omega \pi \nu_\tau

We use heavy vector meson $SU(2)_L \times SU(2)_R$ chiral perturbation theory to predict differential decay distributions for $\tau \rightarrow \rho \pi \nu_\tau$ and $\tau \rightarrow K^* \pi \nu_\tau$ in the kinematic region where $p_V \cdot p_\pi/m_V$ (here $V = \rho$ or $K^*$) is much smaller than the chiral symmetry breaking scale. Using the large number of colors limit we also predict the rate for $\tau \rightarrow \omega \pi \nu_\tau$ in this region (now $V = \omega$). Comparing our prediction with experimental data, we determine one of the coupling constants in the heavy vector meson chiral Lagrangian.Comment: 14 pages, latex 2e. We include the decay of the tau into the omega, pi minus and the tau neutrino, and extract a value for the coupling constant g2, using experimental dat